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Sean Kleefeld has a very good, very thoughtful post on the Zuda interface and its faults. It comes down to a couple of basic philosophical questions that the Zuda folks chose the wrong answers to: Their webcomic model pulls people in, rather than pushing content to viewers (as, say, an RSS feed or an embeddable video does), and many of the things users like to do, such as share content or link to a particular page, are blocked by the viewer. I’ll add another complaint: When I write about a Zuda comic, it’s hard to show samples of the art because I can’t pull it out of the comic. Sarah Jaffe adds some thoughts of her own at Blog@Newsarama.

Girlamatic has a new podcast to go with the site relaunch, and episode 2 includes interviews with creators of their two new webcomics, Lisa Gilbert and Terry Blauer of Godseeker and Monique McNaughton of The Continentals. It is hosted by webcomicker Lynn Lau.

CBR has a preview of the Spider-Woman motion comic. Meanwhile, Johanna Draper Carlson notes that Eagle One is also doing motion comics, these ones based on comics based on an anime and a video game. So the circle is completed.

New comic recommendation: The Watson’s, a slice-of-life one-page gag comic with nice, tight art and slightly offbeat humor. Only four strips up so far, but it’s looking good. That apostrophe seems misplaced, though. (Via Fleen.)

The Archie folks announce that Archie Freshman Year #1 is the most downloaded comic on iTunes. As I observed at Robot 6 a while ago, it’s a nice comic that actually reads better on the iTunes screen than on paper. Still, Johanna Draper Carlson questions where they get those stats and how accurate they are. I don’t care, I just love the graphic that the Archie people came up with to celebrate, especially because there is no sign of an iPhone anywhere.

iVerse has launched its own comics app, the iVerse Comics app for iPhone/iPod Touch. Like comiXology, which launched a few weeks ago, it features an in-app store through which you can buy the comics, as well as features for organizing your collection. The cost is 99 cents, but that gets you 30 free comics.

Yaoi Press publisher Yamila Abraham has an interesting account of an avid customer who bought a Kindle to read her yaoi on. The problem? The customer is in Australia, and the Kindle doesn’t work there. Of course, this is a problem that is easily solved if you have friends overseas, but it raises some interesting issues, including the question of whether markets are being left untapped because of the regional restrictions.

The Monsters of Webcomics show is up at the Museum of Cartoon Art in San Francisco, and the local media is on the case with both the San Francisco Chronicle and SF Station filing reports this week.

Lori Henderson reviews the online manga anthology SIGIKKI. Speaking of which, in this article, Japanese publishers basically admit that they can’t do much about scanlations, illegally posted fan translations of manga, through legal means, so they are fighting back by putting their manga up on the web themselves. It’s so crazy it just might work!

Johanna Draper Carlson picks up on an interesting tidbit: Platinum no longer owns Wowio, although it doesn’t seem to have moved too far away; Platinum’s president and CEO, Brian Altounian, formed a holding company that bought it in July. Flashback Universe has an interview with Altounian that’s more about the site strategy than the financial side. (Via Fleen.)

Not awesome: A magazine devoted solely to the topic of preventive maintenance. Totally awesome: A magazine devoted solely to the topic of preventive maintenance and illustrated by Will Eisner. If anyone can make grunt work exciting and sexy, it’s Will, so the Virginia Commonwealth University Library has truly done a public service by putting the full archive of Eisner’s work for PS Magazine online.

It’s a dramatic tale, full of thrills and uncertainty, with a happy ending: MyRomanceStory is putting their comics on the iPhone, and their press release, intentionally or not, fits the genre to a T.

The NBM folks are a bit more staid about their venture onto the iPhone, but they have an interesting twistâ€”while most publishers sell a chapter at a time for 99 cents, NBM is selling full graphic novels for $6.95 to $9.95 a pop.

Sean Kleefeld finally got a cell phone, but it’s a Dare, not an iPhone, and he’s wondering if anyone is making comics for it yet. I haven’t heard of any. Readers?

At the Boys Next Door blog (which focuses on yaoi manga), Nikita reviews vol. 1 of Games With Me, by Tina Anderson and Lynsley Brito, which is available only on Kindle at the moment.

Creator Kyle Hurlbut found that sales went up after Apple made him raise the age rating on Fallen Justice #2 from 9+ to 12+.

Sony will launch a comics reader for the PSP in December, with comics available for purchase from the PlayStation store. Reportedly Marvel, IDW, Image, and Archie have signed on. JK Parkin has more at Robot 6.

Comics apps for mobile phones are coming out at a dizzying pace, and now there’s a site to help you keep track of them: Find Comic Apps lists new releases and old favorites in a convenient single location. (Via downthetubes Mobile Comics.)

Creators, if all this talk is making you feel like you should be putting your comic on mobile devices, here’s an article for you: Lemuel Pew goes over all the options (including doing nothing and letting people just read your comics on the browser on their handheld), with a thorough discussion of the pros and cons, at Webcomics.com.

JM Ringuet’s cellphone graphic novel Stolen Suns is now available in the iTunes store. Link is here. (Via The Beat.)

Brad Guigar and the Halfpixel guys have started something they call Webcomics.com University, which will feature lectures by noted creators. First class is tonight; Professor Scott Kurtz will talk about line quality.

Amazon.com has announced the Comic Strip Superstar contest, in which one lucky/talented creator will get a book contract with Andrews McMeel and possibly syndication through Universal Press Syndicate and Uclickâ€”very multimedia. The info is up at Webcomics.com, where Brad Guigar doesn’t just run the press release, he takes a critical look at the terms that creators may have to agree to. Gary Tyrrell has some misgivings, and he and Gordon McAlpin now have a twenty dollar riding on the outcome.

Josh Neufeld is doing a book tour to promote the print edition of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. David Welsh turns in the latest review of the book at Precocious Curmudgeon.

Shaenon Garrity has some self-publishing tips for those who are thinking of putting their webcomics into print. This is not the usual top ten, and she has some good ideas, like this point about cover design:

From about the 1880s to the 1930s, people were really good at design. You can’t go wrong ripping those people off.

Here’s the big news of the day: MySpace Dark Horse Presents is back! One of the early and more successful publisher webcomics sites, MSDHP went dark in the wake of massive layoffs at MySpace. Comic Book Resources has the deets on their triumphant return.

Kyle Latino went to Chicago Comic-Con and had his portfolio critiqued by Howard Chaykin and Mitch Breitweiser. Rather than crying into his beer about their comments, he did something constructive and created a webcomic illustrating the principles he learned in the critique.

Meanwhile, Adam Kushner’s critique of the print edition of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge for Newsweek ends up being a critique of the graphic novel medium as a whole. I still can’t figure out whether it’s a rave or a pan, but I do think that Kushner needs to read more graphic novels. I think he’s missing out.

The simple life: Corey Randolph has decided that having four webcomics on four websites was just too much maintenance, so he is consolidating: He is shutting down everything except the main site and putting Barkeater Lake, TOBY, Robot Satan and Greene With Envy on GoComics. He is also rebooting Greene With Envy and slashing prices in the online store. That’s the 411, but you should go read his whole blog post on the topic because it’s worth thinking about his reasoningâ€”this is one of those cases where the standard webcomics model isn’t working, so he’s finding another way. (And it’s not that the comics aren’t goodâ€”go check ’em out. I’ll put them up against the funnies in my newspaper any day.)

But if you want to go in the other direction, DJ Coffman has a quick’n’easy tutorial on setting up your own website and hosting your own comics.

One structural problem with webcomics is that most of them are released a page at a time, making it hard to follow a longer story. Two creators have recently changed their schedules to dole out their stories in bigger chunks: Derik Badman will be publishing a month’s worth of Things Change: The Metamorphoses Comic at the beginning of the month, rather than one page three times a week, and he is releasing PDF downloads of the early volumes to make reading the archives easier. (Via ComixTalk.) And Meredith Gran will update Octopus Pie whenever she has a big chunk of story for us, which means the schedule will now be somewhat irregular. (Via Fleen.)